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Dodging The Whirlwind

I’m going to call this one a tactical victory for Real America. It’s a won battle; it’s not the war.

The President saw the result of Slow Joe Biden’s trial balloons last week – the suggestions of magazine limits, assault weapon bans and other draconian nationwide assaults on law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment Rights – which was measured in an explosion of NRA memberships, a mobilization of grass-roots support for the originalist version of the Second Amendment, and the greatest gun-buying frenzy since the US Army signed gave a blank check to John Garand in 1040 – and blinked.

Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system. [These first two, at first glance, don’t seem like bad ideas in and of themselves, although I have a hunch what’s in that data is going to be worth a fight. More below]

Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system. [Like what Minnesota could have done, had Gov. Messinger Dayton not vetoed the “Stand Your Ground” bill in a fit of bitchy partisan picque, you mean?]

Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks. [Nice and vague and subject to boundless politicization]

Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun. [I’m a little amazed this doesn’t already happen. I’m also leery of giving more “discretion” to law-enforcement, or at least law-enforcement in places like Chicago]

Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers. [Superfluous]

Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign. [You mean, like the ones the National Boogeyman Rifle Association has been running for decades?]

Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission). [Superfluous; gun locks and safes arguably prevent a few accidents; again, it only bears on those responsible enough to use them, rather than criminals]

Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations. [Again, amazed this isn’t already the case]

Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.[As above]

Nominate an ATF director. [Superfluous at best, adding to the bureaucratic misdirection at worst. The BATF has little measurable effect on crime; it serves mainly to badger the law-abiding, at least when it comes to firearms sales]

Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.[Which is great; law-enforcement has advanced a lot in this area since Columbine; given that it took cops 20 minutes to respond to New Town, it’d seem it hasn’t advanced enough. And you can be sure the federally-mandated training won’t include the conclusion that’s blazingly obvious from the training that is being given to law enforcement (that resisting as immediately as possible with lethal force is vital); that having people in the target area with guns and the abiliity to resist is beyond vital]

Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.[Exactly as the NRA has been asking]

Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence. [Now we’re getting Orwellian – and this is the area where Real Americans need to be watchful. The Administration seems to be moving toward the passive-aggressive long game – towarad calling gun ownership a precursor condition to mental illness. There is great danger here]

Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies. [This is a nod toward “gun safety technology” like bolt-face stamps and biometric safeties that make guns much less safe for the law-abiding user, and much more expensive for the lower-income citizen. Which is, of course, one of the goals]

Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes [In other words, turning doctors into Adminstration spies, gathering data for future actions. Suffice to say I’ve got one ‘condition’ I’ll never tell my doctor about]

Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities. [Also amazed this isn’t generally the case]

Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers. [Wait – you mean exactly as the NRA recommended?]

Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges. [Within the context of a rapidly-socializing healthcare system, this and the previous are how the whole “Mental Health” issue gets dealt with, I suppose. Sigh]

Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health. [Because who better to lead a dialogue on mental health than a couple of bureaucrats?]

LIke most tactical victories, today’s developments leave many potential roads to future battles; the definition of mental health, the potential for using Obamacare’s information systems to add millions of Americans to the federal NICS database as “mentally ill” without any real recourse, and on and on.

And on some issues – “School Resource Officers” and safety training – the Administration is bordering on triangulation to the right. Which isn’t all bad, since both of those measures are (on their face) sensible.

But the price of liberty is eternal vigilance – and the orcs have left us much to be vigilant about. Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:

The President assured the nation the federal government isn’t going to take all guns, just impose common sense public safety measures.

I’m thrilled to hear it. I encourage the President to extend that reasoning to other Constitutionally protected rights.

We won’t ban all religions, only those with a tendency toward violence: Catholics. And Jews, because their mere existence provokes peaceful Muslims.

You still can say things that have serious artistic or literary merit, but nothing critical of the government; that’s sedition.

We will only use warrantless searches on the persons, papers, houses and effects of radical extremists: gun owners and church-goers.

See how easy this is? Utopia is within our grasp if we only have the Will to impose it.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

The slope is still slippery. It’s not as steep as it could have been, but we’re all still sliding.

I allow all sorts of people to post under assumed names. Some of them don’t want to be identified for occupational reasons; others are just gutless. It’s fine either way. I’ve always said I won’t break a confidence, but I won’t fight a subpoena either. I allow assumed IDs, provided people mind their manners.

Printing “Nachman’s” real name is merely a bitchy attempt to intimidate. I whacked it for that reason.

My thesis is this; when I look at the information you used to make your statement, I’ll find that:

States of the old Confederacy, regardless of gun ownership rates, will have more or less high firearm death rates versus comparable non-Confederate states. This is a cultural relic of the region’s Scots-Irish heritage (with its history of ritual violence, honor killing and general clannishness), its social and economic legacy; “white trash” were nearly as disouraged to get an education, and achievement was nearly as discouraged, as it was among slaves and freedmen, although more for social than statutory reasons.

Non-Confederate states with high rates of gun ownership will have low to very low firearm death rates.

If you look at county-by-county data, murder rates in rural areas of non-confederate states will be low, while murder rates in the urban areas will be relatively very high. Minnesota’s a great example; we have a high rate of civilian gun ownership, and a low crime rate, especially if you leave out Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Small, socially-homogenous states like Hawaii that have more limited social issues to deal with (i.e. the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow and Scots-Irish majority culture filtered through both of the above) regardless of gun ownership rates will have relatively low firearm death rates

Now, the point was, I wanted to show you exactly those results in exactly the data you (very selectively) cited. I asked for the links. You said “Google is your friend”. Perhaps, but neither my schedule nor the organization of the CDC website are – and in any case, the point was to use your data to prove my point.

It’s a little unfair – I’ve actually done this exercise in the past couple of years, refuting the idea that states that voted for McCain were more violent than states that voted for Obama (here they are in reverse order).

So kindly provide the links you used. It’s not to fob the work off on you; it’s to ensure I’m using your data to debunk you, which is, of course, the point of whole exercise.

Sadly, I’ve been doing this for so long, I have to look for new challenges; not merely debunking the idea, but using my opponents data to do it, makes it a little more interesting.

Emery’s decision to use Nachmann’s real name is mind-boggling. It wasn’t even something that slipped in the course of a discussion, but a stand-alone, 4-word “expose”. Deliberate, petty, hostile and personal. It confirms that, despite his erudite veneer, Emery has nothing to contribute to the discussion. Thankfully, it also reveals that he’s a thug – something which we might not have known or taken into account before now.

Self-exile would be an appropriate response on his part; barring that, readers and commenters should keep these facts in mind if his future scratchings show up on this blog.